Friday, February 14, 2014

From Canaan to Spain

A week ago, the veteran
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat startled his Israeli interlocutors by stating that his ancestors had been
among the Canaanites who had lived in the city of Jericho three thousand years
ago, before the conquering Children of Israel arrived there under Joshua’s
leadership.

It was not made clear what Erekat’s remark was a reaction to. Whatever
it has been, Tzipi Livni, in charge of the negotiations on behalf of Israel,
decided "not to argue with Erekat on historical narratives, but rather
concentrate on building a future of peace”. That aroused against her the great
wrath of Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home Party.

Bennet was quick to set out the
Zionist historical narrative in all its length and breadth and glory - the
Bible and the Divine Promise and the Land of Israel being Our Patrimony for
3800 (sic) years and 2000 Years of Yearning and all the rest of it. In the
print media and on the net, dozens of furious rightists took up the cudgel and
strove with all their might to extol the sole and exclusive rights of the Jews
and smash to smithereens any claims of Erekat and the Palestinians. (Not much later, the zealous
Bennett called Martin
Schulz a liar to his face; Schulz , President of the European Parliament,
spoke in the Knesset and dared to mention the more mundane problem of the water
inequality between Israelis and occupied Palestinians.)

Does Saeb Erekat keep in his pocket the detailed lineage which links
him with the Canaanites of three thousand years ago ? Probably not. On the
other hand , does Naftali Bennett’s pocket contain a lineage culminating with
Joshua’s bloodthirsty warriors? That, too, is rather in doubt . Incidentally,
the name "Bennett ", common in the English-speaking world, is
specifically related to another set of conquerors, the Normans who conquered
England in 1066 and brought the name with them from France . (Even in this
direction, it is not sure that Naftali Bennett has a clear lineage...)

The Bible, the Economy Minister’s favorite book, includes a detailed
description of what the Children of
Israel (Bennett 's ancestors ?) did to the Canaanites (Erekat 's ancestors?) three thousand years ago:

"
And the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so
that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they
took the city [Jericho]. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city,
both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of
the sword.” And later the Children of
Israel under the leadership of Joshua moved on to Ai : "And it came to pass, when Israel
had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the
wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge
of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto
Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword.And so it was, that all that fell
that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.
For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until
he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai." And then on to
Makkedah: "And that day Joshua took Makkedah, and smote it with the edge
of the sword, and the king thereof/ He utterly destroyed them, and all the
souls that were therein; he let none remain”.

In fact, among modern historians this description is doubted, and
considered an exaggeration by a writer a bit later among our ancestors –
presumably someone with a particularly morbid imagination. But in order to hear
such skeptical thoughts one needs to get to university. Pupils in Israeli
schools are taught to regard the wars and massacres of Joshua as undisputed
facts, and as acts committed under the direct command of God Himself.

Thanks to Christianity adopting the Old Testament
as part of its own Scriptures, the story of Joshua’s bloody campaign was
translated into all languages ​​of the world, and for centuries served as a
source of inspiration and legitimacy to many who sought to conquer somebody
else’s land and settle there. For example, those who conquered the land of
Indians in North America and of Blacks in South Africa. By the way, Islam which
adopted many Biblical figures as its own Prophets had the good taste not to
include Joshua among them.

Still, who are we and who were our ancestors? Who
are the Palestinians and who were their ancestors? Looked at soberly, the most
likely answer is that the Jews now living in Israel and in many other countries
do have ancestors who lived in this country two thousand years ago - and they
also have other ancestors who lived in various other places. My own personal
grandmother had very Mongolian cheekbones, which seems to indicate that some of
my own ancestors came to Eastern Europe from the Far East rather than from the
Middle East... The same, probably, is true for the Palestinians - some of them
are descendants of people who lived here two thousand or three thousand years
ago, or perhaps even more, who throughout the generations remained in the same
village and used the same farming methods, while others of the Palestinians’
ancestors probably came at various later times.

In 1918, the Zionist leadersDavid Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben Zvi published a
book called "The Land of Israel, Past and Present". Arab inhabitants
of Palestine - especially in the countryside – were shown to be descendants of
Jews who lived there during the Roman period. Evidence was brought up to
substantiate this theory, in particular that the Arab dialect of the country’s
peasants was full of Hebrew and Aramaic words. The research found that some
10,000 names of villages, rivers, springs , mountains, valleys, and hills all
over the country in fact preserved the ancient Hebrew names in the Arabs’
usage.

At the time Ben Gurion and Ben-Zvi, future PM and
President of Israel, entertained some hope that if the Arab inhabitants would
be shown that their ancestors had been Jews, they might want to be Jewish in the
present time and to cast their lot with Zionism. This hope was dashed soon.
Especially since the Zionist movement was striving very hard to buy land all
over the country and establish on it Kibbutzim and Moshavim – very Socialist
Zionist communities, in which there was no place whatsoever for Arabs, Jewish
ancestry or not...

The narrative of the Palestinians’ Jewish origin
was consigned to a dusty shelf, and its place was taken by a completely
opposite idea, Far from the Palestinians having lived here for two thousand
years and maintaining remnants of a Jewish ancestral heritage, they had not
been here at all. The land was empty and deserted, when the Zionist pioneers
arrived in the late Nineteenth Century. The Palestinians - recent immigrants,
migrant workers who came here because the Zionists have developed the country
and created jobs which attracted them. It was this narrative was set out at
great length by Nadav Shragai, a veteran columnist of the Israeli right-wing,
in reaction to Saeb Erekat’s Canaanite origin.
In anarticle which covered three pages in the weekend edition of
"Israel Today" (nicknamed “The Bibinews") Shragai gleefully listed surnames common
among Palestinians, which prove that they have come here from other countries.
For example, those called " El Masri " are of Egyptian origin, and those
called " Mughrabi " have come here all the way from Morocco. Shragai
forgot, however, to mention that this last name exists also among Israeli Jews…

A few days later came the exiting news of the
Spanish Government 's intention to grant Spanish citizenship to all who could
show that their ancestors were among the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492.
There are quite a few Israelis whose surnames indicate the city in Spain where
their ancestors lived, Toledano and Cordovero and Saragusti and Valenci and Murciano.
Many of them plan to go to the Spanish Consulate in Tel Aviv as soon as the law
is finally enacted by the parliament in Madrid. "Now, the Ashkenazis will
no longer be the only ones to have place to flee to" one of them told a
Yediot Aharonot reporter.